“We Have to Look at Ourselves as Missionary Evangelists”: An Interview with the Most Rev. William D. Byrne

 

The Most Rev. William D. Byrne is Bishop of the Springfield Diocese and has visited the East Coast campus on several occasions, most recently to dedicate the Our Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel upon its completion in March 2022.

 

By opening a New England campus, Thomas Aquinas College hopes to help to bring the light of faith back to a region that has become largely secularized. Would you say that is also the mission of your diocese?

This is now a mission diocese, and as such we are missionaries. So it’s not like it was for my predecessors, coming into a well-established church. We are re-creating, and not necessarily going back, but moving forward into a new, beautiful future. But just like all the missionaries who came before us, such as St. Francis Xavier, we are setting off into very exciting territory — scary at times, but also very exciting. So I think we have to look at ourselves as missionary evangelists.

What does that entail?

I think that’s the beauty of Thomas Aquinas College. The answer is found in the formation of our own Catholics, so that we can understand the Faith. If we understand the Faith, then we can explain the Faith. And after nearly half a century of failed catechesis, our people are unable to do that, and they don’t even remember what some of the answers are, or even that the Church has the answers. So the secret is not just preaching the Word, but preaching the Word to those who claim to be Catholics, and giving them adequate formation to share the Faith.

You were once a college chaplain. Can you talk about what’s entailed in ministering to college students?

I was the chaplain at the University of Maryland from 1999 to 2007, a radically different experience than Thomas Aquinas College, a very secular university in a very secular state. The thing that I discovered was — in a culture where everything is possible and everything is permissible, and where tolerance is somehow seen as the only virtue — the Gospel stands out as something radical and new that many of the students hadn’t experienced before.

So I didn’t have to re-create the product. We have the Way, the Truth and the Life of Jesus Christ; it was about placing Him in the center. I started to do Eucharistic Adoration and made our retreats centered on the Eucharist, Adoration, and Confession. Things started to change immediately. We tripled the number of students from a few hundred to nearly 1,000 in my time there. We had vocations, about 14 priestly vocations, about 5 vocations to religious life. It was a valuable lesson that if you want to change things, put Jesus in the center, and it will all take care of itself.

“Whether it be in the courtroom or the operating room or the classroom — or wherever Thomas Aquinas College graduates find themselves — they are going to be called to bring Christ to a place where He has been excluded.”

What do you think it means for the College’s students to be “missionary evangelists?”

Some of them are going to be called to the priesthood and others to religious life; however, I think the true work of Evangelization is an informed and empowered laity. That was the inspiration of the Second Vatican Council, where the so-called “power of the laity” began. Graduates of Thomas Aquinas College are called to be the leaven of society. I am a firm believer that we are called to move into the world and transform the culture from the inside, and not just preach to those on the outside. But whether it be in the courtroom or the operating room or the classroom — or wherever Thomas Aquinas College graduates find themselves — they are going to be called to bring Christ to a place where He has been excluded.

It seems we live in a society of widespread distrust, and that creates an especially challenging climate for sharing the Gospel. How do you think that challenge can be overcome?

Satan is the great scatterer, so it’s not difficult to see his work at hand. Because we have gotten less religious — by the hour, almost — we see the confusion grow along with a loss of the sense of the common good. Overcoming that is not a matter of coming up with the right branding or the correct message. It’s about just bringing in Jesus Christ and letting Him do the work through us. I think an essential character for either laity or clergy should be a deep, deep prayer life, an ability to rely on the Lord, to know the Lord, and to be able to be used by the Lord. I am not sure the magic formula is anything more complicated than fidelity — and also the courage to endure persecution, which our church has always faced, and which is the seed of even greater faith.

How do we avoid falling into acrimony, and instead find ways to pursue the common good?

Well, we are already there. I mean, that’s the problem within the Church. The acrimony has gotten into the roots of some people’s faith, so that people have the capacity to pick and choose what they think is true, and that again is the work of the Scatterer. That’s why we need people like Thomas Aquinas College graduates to enter politics, to be effective lawyers and judges, to bring faith and truth to our common discussion. But I think it also requires us to stand up and speak the truth, whether it’s in fashion or out of fashion.

You have spoken of the need to boost vocations in your diocese. How do you hope to do that?

First of all you pray and you get people to pray. We try to do Holy Hours for vocations, to bring guys in front of the Eucharist, to allow the Lord to speak to them. In addition to that, it’s about re-creating a culture within the clergy, to make priests realize that each one of them is a vocations recruiter and that they are called to welcome guys into discernment. Almost every priest will tell you that, at some point in his life, another priest said to him, “You know, you would make a good priest,” and that confirmed that the Lord was speaking to his heart. It’s about helping to create a culture of joyful priests who share that gift.

In your own life, what did your parents do to prepare you for your vocation? What advice would you offer parents to help their children hear and respond to that call?

I had an uncle who was a priest, so that made it all normative in our huge family. He was a beloved priest of the Archdiocese of New York, Fr. John Byrne, and my father very much admired him. We would have priests to dinner at the house, that kind of thing, making the exposure to priests common and positive.

The other thing is parents encouraging their children to think about the idea of vocation. Thomas Aquinas College is blessed in that many of the families are larger, so parents are less likely to be fearful of the prospect of not becoming grandparents. The family that is open to life in every way will be more open to the will of God and to produce vocations. I am confident of that, especially in the community of Thomas Aquinas College.

Do you have any advice for our students who are discerning vocations?

The thing to remember is: The first call is not to priesthood, the first call is to the seminary, and it is in the seminary that you discern a call to the priesthood. So to take some pressure off you, if you feel the Lord might be calling you, it’s important to give it a try.

First of all, make sure to enter into spiritual direction beforehand. Make sure you are going to confession regularly, trying to live a virtuous life so that you can hear the Lord speak to you. Then, at the seminary, it’s a seven-year process of discernment. And the day a guy leaves the seminary is as joyful as the day that someone gets ordained, because it means that the Lord is calling someone, not to be a priest but, maybe, the father of a priest.

You are still relatively new to your diocese. How would you describe it and your acclimation to it?

Western Massachusetts is a beautiful place in every way. I think the people are lovely; they’re far enough away from Boston that it has its own warm and welcoming culture. It has a variety of experiences, from urban poor to suburban to beautiful countryside, farming communities. The Berkshires are lovely. There are many, many different Latino communities. It also has many different cultures in which to bring and define Christ, so I think it’s a beautiful place to be a bishop.

You even have some Ukrainian Catholics in the Diocese, is that right?

Yes, and a very large Polish community. What I think is really beautiful amidst the ugliness of this horrible war is that, in Poland they have received millions of refugees, but there are no refugee camps. The refugees are being taken into people’s homes and cared for in their homes.

In my own diocese, I have seen an outpouring of generosity to the cause, from people going over there to help Ukrainians defend themselves, to items given in parish collections, to amazing financial contributions in every parish toward Catholic Relief Services and helping with the refugees. I am not amazed — my people are generous and good people — but I am very moved by the response to the ugliness of war with the beauty of love and generosity.

“Get out there. Get out into the world and bring the Lord and what He’s given you as a gift to share with others.”  

What is your vision of Catholic education in your diocese, and what role, if any, do you think this college might play in it?

Covid gave our schools a boost, a much-needed boost, and I am a firm believer in the power of Catholic education. The challenge is to make sure that it’s not just “public school in a uniform,” but authentically Catholic. That’s why I hope that, should some TAC-New England graduates decide to go into Catholic education — what a beautiful place to be! — they will look into some opportunities for opening schools in this area. I have been in preliminary conversations with folks from the College, and I love seeing what we can do to support a classical academy for the families here. My hope for the future is to open schools, and not just maintain them.

The College is still very much new to the Diocese. Do you have any suggestions for what it can do to be a good neighbor?

I think it would be a shame if Thomas Aquinas College were an island, as opposed to being a place where the community — students, tutors, and staff — actually engaged themselves in the lives of the various churches in the area. There are some beautiful churches all throughout Franklin County, some beautiful communities of all varieties of people. I hope that you make it a home that you go out into the world from and engage and uplift that community with your faith and your own formation.

You have published a series of YouTube videos and a book about “Five Things” Catholics should know or do. What are “five things” TAC students should know or do as they prepare for lives of service in the Church and the world?

No. 1 is get holy. Spend time before Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and make daily Eucharist a necessity of your life. No. 2, stay holy. Make sure you are going to Confession on a regular basis, and stay away from things that are going to keep you from the Lord. No. 3 is get smart. Learn the Faith, learn the culture, and learn the philosophy that’s going to help you bring truth to a culture that’s in error. No. 4, have fun. College is not just about mental learning, it’s about learning the beauty of friendship that will sustain you throughout your life. So get friends. And No. 5, get out there. Get out into the world and bring the Lord and what He’s given you as a gift to share with others.

One last question: Who is Zélie and why is she important?

Zélie is my four-year old black Labrador retriever. I haven’t brought her to Thomas Aquinas College, but I will sometime. She is the Episco-pup. She goes with me to many, many places and is an evangelization machine, drawing people to her all the time. She has been my canine companion during Covid, and she is definitely worth meeting.

Zélie is a Laudato Si’ reminder, for me, of Pope Francis — the experience of God in creation. In my book, I have a whole chapter on “5 Things I’ve Learned from my Dog” and how my dog is completely dependent on me, so I have to remind myself to be completely dependent on God. My dog doesn’t complain when we go somewhere; she’s just happy to be along for the ride. I need to just be happy to go along for the ride with Jesus Christ.